Sleep laboratory studies in restless legs syndrome patients as compared with normals and acute effects of ropinirole 2. Findings on periodic leg movement, arousals and respiratory variables

The restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a common sensorimotor disorder which le ads to severe sleep disturbances and showed a prevalence of 7.9% in our sle ep laboratory. The aim of this study was to investigate periodic leg moveme nts (PLM), arousal and respiratory variables in 12 untreated RLS patients a nd to measure the acute effects of 0.5 mg ropinirole, a nonergoline dopamin e agonist, as compared with placebo. in the target variable PLM/h of total sleep time (PLM/h TST), RLS patients showed an increased value of 40/h (nor mal 0-5/h). Further, we found an increased number of PLM (368), PLM/h of ti me in bed (49/h), PLM/h of REM sleep (11), PLM/h of non-REM sleep (46) and PLM/h awake (61). The arousal index was also increased (32/h; normal 0-25/h ), as were arousals due to PLM. In the confirmatory part of our descriptive data analysis, ropinirole 0.5 mg significantly improved, as compared with placebo, the index PLM/h TST by 75%. In the descriptive part, all the other PLM variables were improved as well. Arousals due to PLM decreased, while spontaneous arousals increased. Respiratory variables, which had a priori b een in the normal range, showed a slight but significant improvement after the dopamine agonist. Thus, 0.5 mg ropinirole significantly improved the ta rget variable PLM/h TST, along with objective and subjective sleep quality and morning noopsychic performance, as described in the preceding paper. Ou r data encourage further sleep studies including all above-mentioned variab les in a larger group of RLS/PLM during sleep patients as well as long-term efficacy trials. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel.